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So listen in wherever you're at to veteransradio
.org and its podcasts. We want to welcome to
Veterans Radio today, historian, author, fellow,
Quinn Chow, who's going to talk to us about the
Pacific Atrocities Education Foundation out in
California, although I think he's actually on
the East Coast at this point. But Quinn, welcome
to Veterans Radio. Hi, thank you for having me
on. Well, let me set this up a little bit. You
are. as I mentioned, a historian and author specializing
in the history of global conflict and geopolitics
in the Asia -Pacific region. You are a 2023 graduate
summa cum laude from the University of Southern
California. We always like to have these really
smart guys on because you can help the rest of
us regular folk just understand what's going
on. You had a double major in history and international
relations. You are a fellow at the Pacific Atrocities
Education Foundation. And that's an organization,
as I understand it, that started in 2014 by Jenny
Chen to have a little more focus, a little more
research, a little more academics on what went
on in the Asia Pacific region during World War
II. We tend to focus a little more, I think,
on European theater, but a whole lot of activities.
I know my father was over in the Pacific, so
a lot of activities in the Pacific. But tell
us how you got involved with the Pacific Atrocious
Education. Yeah, so I actually got involved with
Pacific Atrosities Education in the summer of
2020 during the pandemic. I was of interest in
the Second World War and in military history
for quite a long time since I was a... rather
small child, and by the time that I was done
with my freshman year of college, I found this
internship opportunity on the Pacific Atrocities
Education website, and I applied, and I became
an intern, and I wrote a book, actually, on the
China Burma India campaign of World War II. It's
on Amazon. You can buy it if you are so desire.
It's called competing empires in Burma Yeah,
the China -Burma India theater World War two
and Yeah, I did that and I've actually today
I just completed a over 400 page book about the
Kwantung army which was a Japanese army in Manchuria.
After my fellowship ended in 2020, I basically
started a new project on the Kwantung Army and
I've been working on it in the summers and ever
since I became a fellow at PAE after graduation.
Today, I finished. I finished the final draft.
Congratulations. Congratulations. That's got
to feel great to finally say, OK, that's done.
Now, are you still in the editing for publications
phase, or is that all done as well? I just finished
the editing process. It took a lot out of me
and I, you know, I've pulled some all -nighters
here, but I've burnt the candle on both ends
and gone to the mat, but I think the result will
end up being worth it in the end. Well, one of
the things I think Pacific atrocities education
is trying to do is put a little more scholarly
research into Hey, what really went on in World
War II from a Japanese Army perspective? Can
you talk a little bit about the scholarship and
the research that Pacific Atrocities has been
focused on for going on now with something like
10 years, 10, 11 years? Yes. Generally speaking,
as you pointed out, in the kind of English -speaking
world, and even the Western world more generally,
there is maybe less knowledge about the Asia
-Pacific theater of World War II. Especially
anything that happens on the Asian continent,
the Asian mainland, right, I think is very...
forgotten and overlooked. It was even forgotten
at all in most cases. I'd say in America, it's
just kind of not well known that for, you know,
depending on how you count either four or even
10 years before the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor,
the Chinese were engaged in a pretty high intensity
conflict with the Japanese for with the Imperial
Japanese Army. I think at the peak of the Imperial
Japanese Army's kind of deployment to China,
I think there's somewhere around 1 .5 or 1 .6
million troops that were deployed. And they were
these obviously being tied down to this extent
in a country so big and vast as China is a bit
of a strategic blunder. from the perspective
of Japan, but more to the question, we basically
write about and try to inform. English -speaking
audiences about a variety of different topics,
mainly and especially the various atrocities
the Imperial Japanese Army committed on the Asian
mainland in their campaigns of imperial aggression,
but also the campaigns themselves, the military
history and the operational history, if you will,
we try to tell that. I actually kind of see myself
as being a bit of an ops guy. So that's, we try
to strike a fine balance, but there is definitely
an emphasis on the atrocities that the Imperial
Japanese Army committed during the war. And a
lot of this, as you mentioned, I don't think
we in the United States really have maybe been
exposed to it, in part because Hollywood hasn't
done its bit to make the right movies, right?
There are hundreds of books and videos that Pacific
Atrocities has put up on its website, which is
pacificatrocities .org. follow Saigon, follow
Singapore, I mean, the China -Burma -India War,
Philippines resistance, and then Unit 731, which
I want you to talk a little bit about because
I don't know anything about this. And as you
say, you've written research and written on the
China -Burma -India Theater and the Kwantung
Army. Kind of give us give us at a high level
those things which we just haven't yet focused
on In that area Yes, so There's a lot to unpack
in both cases With regards to the China Burma
India theater is very noteworthy for being a
very multinational theater You have Chinese,
you have Indians, you have West Africans, you
have various different types of the Bermans and
people who would not call themselves Berman from
what's now called Myanmar. You obviously have
the Japanese, you have Americans, you have British
and et cetera down the line. diverse pool of
people that are fighting over Burma, which was
primarily important in a strategic sense because
it is a route by which the allies, Britain and
America, could send China weapons, oil, and supplies,
at least up through the spring of 1942 when Burma
fell after a series of kind of rapid Japanese
outflanking maneuvers of the defenders and the
shall we say less than optimal preparation and
deployment of those said defenders to kind of
give you an idea of the unpreparedness of the
British defenders in Burma during the first Burma
campaign, you had one division defending 400
miles of frontage. For reference, divisions should
probably defend somewhere around 10 kilometers
of frontage in World War II. 400 miles is in
almost even if the terrain is totally impassable
would be Quite a bit still to ask of one division.
That's a rabbit hole With regard to Queen let
me ask you this Were the mistakes which Britain
the US made in some of these actions in Asia
in part because they just didn't know what the
heck they were getting into. They were unfamiliar
with that part of the world, or did they just
truly underestimate the capabilities of the Imperial
Army and maybe the Chinese forces as well? After
you've done all this research, what are your
thoughts on some of those strategic or operational
mistakes that were made? The case of the British,
especially early in the war, and even to an extent
the Americans as well, there was an underestimation
of the Japanese, the Imperial Japanese Army,
that was rather severe. In part, it was kind
of a byproduct of the prejudices of the day,
the kind of the racism, to put it bluntly. You
had some, you know, British soldiers and airmen
who didn't think the Japanese could be good pilots
or design good aircraft. And then they found
out that the Japanese had established air superiority
over Malaya and Singapore in the matter of a
few days. But really, it's... It's a combination
of poorly appraising the enemy and also not being
prepared to fight against an enemy that is weaponizing
surprise, rapid light infantry out flanking maneuvers,
and being ready for the jungle warfare. essentially,
that there was an element of unpreparedness of
defending the jungle. There's too much just focusing
on cleared areas and key roads and kind of maintaining
defenses in these places, but not in the, shall
we say, less though still less traversable though
still passable terrain. I know I'm jumping all
around and there's way too much to cover here
and we'll probably have to do this again but
let me because I think Jenny would want to make
sure we talk some not only about some of those
operational issues but the atrocities themselves
I think that's what shook her in 2014 to say,
wow, I didn't know the Imperial Japanese Army
did that. It is shocking. And that's what she's
trying to make sure doesn't get lost to history.
Can you give us a little bit of insight into
those or that area? Of course. So I just completed
a book on the Kwantung Army and one of the kind
of most extreme aspects of the Kwantung Army
was, as you pointed out, Unit 731. And Unit 731
was the bacteriological and biological warfare
element within the Kwantung Army. And its role
was to test and try and develop bacteriological
and biological weapons. But the way they did
this was they experimented on people. And they,
for instance, would inject people with diseases,
such as anthrax and syphilis, and try to see
what happened. They would freeze people. They
would do experiments where they would try to
find out the threshold for frostbite and to what
extent you could survive extreme cold or pressure
or alternatively live vivisections. They would
basically take people's vital organs out of their
body while they were still alive and try to see
how long it would take for them to die and what
would happen or they might try to reattach one
part of the body to another. And this was something
that was, you know, they made into an industry
of sorts. They did it at a scale and for a length
of time that is quite shuddering to think about,
quite honestly. And the craziest part is, is
that after the end of World War II, they got
off the hook, because General MacArthur wanted
the results from the experiments, and he didn't
opt to prosecute them at the Tokyo war crimes
trials. The head of 731 Isshiro, he exchanged
the results of the experiments for Essentially
going free There is I think widely known in in
you know, the United States the certain amount
of brutality and in the Japanese POW camps I
think the death rate far exceeded the death rate
in the German camps As you as you research this
and thought about some of these atrocities, is
there an explanation or a rationale for why?
Well, in terms of Western allied prisoners of
war in German camps, I think the death rate was
somewhere around like 3 % or something. It was
pretty small. In the Japanese prisoner of war
camps, it was somewhere around 27%. If you were
alternatively a Chinese prisoner, you were basically
dead if you got taken prisoner. In most cases,
there were some instances of guys that would
be maybe impressed into roles as soldiers in
a puppet army or puppet militia or made to do
some kind of slave labor. By and large, the Imperial
Japanese Army did not take Chinese prisoners.
They killed a lot of them. That was their modus
operandi. One of the reasons that IJA treated
prisoners so badly was because of the culture
that was kind of fostered within the IJA for
basic training on forward. So there was frequent
corporal punishment from NCOs that was inflicted
on the enlisted ranks during basic training and
even after. And this was quite common. Officers
would also sometimes strike their subordinates.
All the while, these men are being kind of inculcated
with the idea that it's very shameful to surrender.
It's very shameful to give up. It's not a fighting
man does not do this. He doesn't give up the
fight as long as he has a fighting breath. This
was in many ways a byproduct of the IJA's doctrinal
emphasis on morale and spirit and Ilan over kind
of factors such as firepower or numerical superiority
or material capability. This was, and people
call it, kind of understand it in terms of Bushido,
or the way of the warrior. Even really the IJA
actually in a sense picked and chose what it
wanted to from the existing tradition or pre
-existing tradition of Bushido and they basically
chose the parts that were more suitable to creating
brainwashed warriors that would kill at the drop
of a hat and on command. Without any sense of
humanity right if you're gonna kill all the Chinese
prisoners And and the death rate in the Japanese
POW camps for Americans and Australians and British
so high there's really no sense of humanity there
was there There's no humanity. It's also worth
noting that There was Japan went to war with
limited food supply, right? So you're basically,
they went to war with only kind of 90 % of the
food requirements that they needed, which sounds
okay until you realize that at least probably
five to 10 % of the population is going to starve
because of that, if not more. when you take into
account infrastructure and kind of various inefficiencies
and things of that nature. So, you know, for
instance, in Vietnam, towards the end of the
war in 1944 and five, you had over a million
people starved to death because the Japanese
infantrymen were kind of left to wither on the
vine. Their logistical situation had collapsed,
in part because of the American submarine campaign
in the latter years of the war, and in part because
the IJA's logistical system was very flawed and
limited to begin with. But They yeah, we're basically
just going around forging for food and Basically,
yes stealing it from they didn't need another
mouth to feed However, you were a prisoner, but
let me ask you this as we kind of run through
some time here and Why is it why is it important
that the work of the Pacific Atrocious Education
move forward. What is it as an author, a historian,
a researcher? Give us that sort of big picture
view of why it's important not to forget this.
Well, it's important for several reasons. For
one thing, it's within living memory. And there
is also a historical memory of all the atrocities
and misdeeds that the Imperial Japanese Army
committed in Asia during the war. So in China,
for example, I think this month, you have films
being released about Unit 731. And also about
the rape of Nanking which is probably the more
Iris Chang wrote a very famous book entitled
the rape of Nanking I think back in 2003 and
it did a very good job of chronicling how the
Imperial Japanese Army Basically slaughtered
probably hundreds of thousands of Chinese in
Nanking after the fall of the city. These events
and these historical occurrences are still within
living memory of many people in East Asia. I
think that Japan has not really adequately apologized
for any of the atrocities that it committed during
the war. And I must say that the American government
in the post -war era made a conscious decision
to empower certain elements within Japan that
were complicit or in some cases more than complicit
in the war crimes that were committed during
the war. So to give an example, there is a fellow
named Kishi Nobusuke who oversaw the economy
and industrialization of Manchuria. And he was
using slave labor in the millions to basically
build a military industrial complex in Manchuria.
But after the war, he was... Basically, he became
the prime minister of Japan in the late 50s with
the help of the American CIA, and his grandson,
a fellow by the name of Abe Shinzo, became the
prime minister of Japan. So there is a pretty
straight line that can be drawn between the various
figures that emerged from the dust of World War
II and that emerged from the result of World
War II into the relatively contemporary period.
That ripple carries forward right to today. Yep,
that's right. I want to encourage people who
find this conversation interesting, unknown to
them. Pacificatrocities .org, it has stories,
it has links to books, it has archives, history
issues, videos, there's a lot more information
here that you can get. And I think it's worthy
to delve into, as we say, it ripples to today
through Japan and... There are probably that
probably there are lessons to be learned about
the mistakes that were made leading up to World
War two as we ignored the the Pacific Asian area
and then miscalculated what was really going
on so very interesting and I really appreciate
your time quinch Oh author historian fellow with
Pacific atrocities education And I want to thank
everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fossone. It's been a pleasure to be
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